Interesting Berri article… I guess you could say it defends his coaching but not his GM’ing… since the “talent” level is terrible. I guess it is a semi-defense in suggesting that other GMs might have done the same thing, if they had the same resources.

imho that article is really specious. good coaching takes the talent and leads them to better performance. As an example, the NY Giants have pretty much the same club as last year, far fewer penalties….they IMPROVED through better coaching.

Player performance and stats are effected by leadership, not the other way around.

Player value can best be measured in Ws…Zeke had plenty of them as a player, very few as a coach or GM. Using W/Ls to evaluate talent — you wouldn’t ever want Starbury, Curry on your team…

The fact that Isiah is no dumber than most according to the article is not an excuse but rather an indictment. Almost every poster on this board for eons has bemoaned the type of player the team is filled with for months if not years. It’s not rocket science.

Retropkid – IT’s specious if you believe that coaches make a huge impact on a team’s performance, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the NBA. To win in the NBA, you need a couple of great players. The Knicks don’t have any. There is no coach that cna fix that.

Jason Eshleman just posted this in the comment thread over there, one of my favorite commentors, very accurate assessment I think. His better strategy is the right one I think, even though it unfortunately means another 2-3 years of misery possibly, which we are probably in for anyway…

“It seems there’s a couple things going on. One is that the Isiah isn’t a very good GM, but the second is that it’s a difficult problem to solve even for a good GM.

Perhaps someone who has followed the Knicks more carefully can elaborate on this, but it seems to me that when Thomas took control of the Knicks they were already a gigantic salary team that wasn’t doing very well.

One of the ‘problems’ (a problem if you are in ownership, not so much if you’re a player) with the NBA collective bargaining agreement is that it’s very difficult to shed salary and correct old mistakes. When most teams are over the cap, trades, for the most part, involve swapping similar salaries. The differences in salaries then come from the comparative length of contracts that with few exceptions have raises built into them over their life. Isiah seems to ignore this back end when acquiring players.

(Given the willingness to spend) teams can very easily retain players and keep paying them at high rates, but it’s not so easy to erase the mistake or to lure in new players to cover them up. I don’t know how many of the current Knicks owe their contracts to Isiah (I believe Curry does) but some of the overpaid masses were acquired through trade. Most of the players he has acquired were considered problems of some sort, usually because their production didn’t match salary *before* he got them, but usually, he’s sent out similarly worthless overpaid players in the deal. Where Isiah erred significantly was in trying to stop the bleeding by swapping problem for problems with longer contracts and enticing teams with draft picks to take on his problems.

A better strategy would be to wait, as painful as it would be, for the contracts to go away and build slowly through the draft until some point when momentum favored actually trying to acquire something of value in an existing player. This strategy doesn’t mesh with a ‘we want to win *NOW* attitude that may put pressure on immediate returns even if the “win now” is such a long shot that the results are likely going to be the same. The difference is that in trading for “Starbury” and similar hyped scorers, it appears that he’s trying to do something, though in reality, the results are predictable *and* it further postpones the opportunity to improve.

What’s interesting is that he drafted Lee and Balkman, “role players” that PER and WP identify as being productive (though the measures differ on how much) but then seems to favor other players in his rotation. He seems able to draft reasonably well given his other limitations and draft independent of the scorer’s bias. However, once a player enters the league, he seems to believe the hype of “Starbury puts up 40!” [sub headline is ignored: ‘his team loses.’]

Owen, if coaches don’t make a difference in the NBA, then we should’ve stuck with Larry Brown…

I don’t think coaches make a “huge” impact, but they do make a difference. In the NBA, in an 82 game season, if a coach makes the difference in just five games ( just 6% of all games)a team goes from 41 wins to 46…or 35 to 40…or 45 to 50 (assuming your player talent decides the base-line win level).

That’s an enormous difference in each case…making the play-offs vs. not; getting home-court if you would’ve already been there, etc. Hard to believe smart use of talent, minute distribution, motivation, defensive schemes, etc. don’t make a difference in at least five games a year…

As stupid as Dolan is, I don’t think he shells out $4 million a year to a guy he thinks won’t make a difference.

Coaches make a difference but usually it is in my opinion almost always a negative one. A team has a certain talent level to win say 50 games. A good coach will get their team to win those 50 games but a bad coach will hurt the team and they will only win 45 or 40.

I think the biggest place that coaches make a difference is in setting the rotation and then getting out of their players way. Players will perform up to their efficiency level if given a good stuation. Rarely do coaches cause players to play above their abilities, and usually only get in their players way by making them tentative or unaware of their role.

So a bad coach can have a huge negative impact on a team but a good coach will only get their team to play up to their ability.

Last year Isiah was a fairly solid coach and got in my opinion about as many wins as this team was capable of. This year however he is doing badly. But again it is not all Isiah the coaches fault. The team with the addition of Randolph is worse than last years team and Richardson’s decline is not Isiah the coaches fault. The declines of Curry, Balkman, and Robinson are however Isiah’s fault. He has misused all three players causing all three to lose confidence.

The mess of the 2007 Knicks is both bad coaching and a badly assembled team, but even with great coaching this team is at best a .500 team and that is only by benching alot of our highly paid veterans.

“IT’s specious if you believe that coaches make a huge impact on a team’s performance, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the NBA.”

Owen– do you really think coaches don’t have a huge impact on a team’s performance? I’m not sure what the basis of “that doesn’t seem to be the case in the NBA” is, or what “huge impact” really means, but I think you may be under-valuing the role of an NBA coach.

Is there some stat that measures a coach’s effectiveness? Is the NBA really that different from other sports associations that a coach in the NBA somehow makes less of a difference than a coach in MLB or the NFL or even the NCAAs?

In college ball, the coach’s impact is more as a GM than as a coach. The best coaches are the best recruiters. Since the NBA divides such labor (at least in the non-retarded franchises) their actual impact on a game is more abstract and harder to pin actual wins and losses on, but I think that the best coach for any fifteen person unit (i.e. team) can make the difference between a team that goes 23-59 and a legit playoff team.

“if coaches don’t make a difference in the NBA, then we should’ve stuck with Larry Brown…”

Or Don Chaney. (Maybe Owen and Dolan share a common philosophy– since Dolan never seemed to really want to fire Chaney, and obviously doesn’t want to fire Isiah, maybe they both believe that coaches don’t “make a huge impact on a team’s performance”.)

You would think with the NBA populated with more young guys than ever, coaches matter more now than, say, 10 years ago in the NBA.

Who pushes a Durant to hit the weights? Who teaches him proper footwork on D?

NBA now has zone — few use it much, but it’s a technique that requires coaching.

NBA is filled with mediocre clubs, where small increments of improvement make the difference…the difference between Indiana, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Washington, Charlotte? Not much. But some will at least get into the play-offs…the Knicks won’t — our guys don’t have a ton of talent, but neither do theirs…coaching has to be a part of the answer.

There are plenty more examples, but I reckon coaches matter more today in the NBA than ever.

There have been plenty of talented teams that didn’t gel (any number of Laker clubs over the decades qualify) and a surprising number that gel right away (look at Celts today). Yes, much of it is talent, and I’d always like to have the best guys, but under-estimating the value of real leadership is a mistake…coaching KG is probably easier than coaching Curry — but a top coach instills top attitudes, and attracts guys who have them…our coach, our insightful talent guy — brought in losers and has kept them that way…

I completely disagree with Berri’s thesis that Isiah built (or misbuilt) the current roster because they are all scorers and so he — similar to the market — overpaid for scorers (who otherwise detract from a solid team game).

I can’t stand stand I….H T….S, can’t even type his name. But. He was going for some of the top young talent with no regard for chemistry and no vision for the team. Get really great talent onto the team and then use my charm to optmize their value. Unfortunately none have the drive that he had throughout his playing career.

Just read a piece on Yahoo (NBA’s Most Disappointing Teams) that says the Knicks coach does no game preparation. Rival GM quipped, “Are they a D-League Team?”

I don’t have a leg to stand on….I thought this team was going to really start playing this year. WTF to I know.

Some food for thought. I have been a Knick fan since 1968. I live far upstate now and listen to pre-season games on the radio. I have seen some very good teams, a couple of great teams and some very bad teams. Nothing like this though. I still play ball several times per week and do the best I can. The Knicks as a team do not. Not only is there a lack of effort, but obviously the talent level of the team is below average-position by position. The other issue is that the team has not been asembled with role players and without a team idea. The players do not compliment each other and there is no synergism at all. I asked my friend the other day if he was the coach and I was the GM could the team be worse? Our honest answer was probably not. A few questions:
1. Why don’t we have a point guard?
2. Why do we have a Center that can’t rebound or block shots? It is sickening.
3. Why don’t we have a shooting guard that can shoot?
4. Why do we have several three’s who absolutely can not shoot. As a 51 year old scrub YMCA player, I can’t bear to even watch some of them shoot.
5. Why can’t we make Marbury a 2 and get a point guard? I lived through Ed Sherard.
6. Why can’t David Lee start at the 2?

The only true answer is that Isiah has assembled a bad team and that the owner doesn’t have a clue. Maybe this is obvious. Please continue to be fans, but raise your voices and be heard. This is a capitalism and something has got to give. Maybe someone can figure out how to make money with this franchise. daJudge.

This is a very interesting discussion.. I’ve never seen a really good analysis of coaching impact.

A Berri-type analysis is sort of circular – is the team bad because the players are bad i.e. don’t have a lot of “wins produced,” or do the players have few “wins produced” because the team is bad due to bad coaching?

Based on no more than general observation, I’d say the very best (or very worst) coaches might make an impact of 5-7 games, and most make much less difference than that. 15 wins? would the 2005-2006 Knicks really have won 8 games with Isiah coaching in Larry’s place? Would the Jordan-era Bulls really have been a 50-win, 1st or 2nd round playoff flameout with a regular coach at the helm?

But it WOULD be possible to measure, at least for a good estimate. I believe that 85 percent of a coach’s impact, his job, is just putting the best players on the floor. It’s not getting players to work out or play hard – that’s basically up to them, and at the NBA level, with few exceptions there’s not a huge difference in how hard players work to develop their game, or between how many tricks each “big man” coach can teach. Xs and Os aren’t nearly as complicated as football – it’s not rocket science out there.

Most people here generally accept that per-minute numbers can fairly reliably be extrapolated to additional (theoretical) playing time. Using a method like Berri’s, you can compare the projected impact (in wins and losses) of replacing Quentin Richardson for 20 minutes a game with, say, Renaldo Balkman…or Malik Rose. Or predict what would happen if 20 of Eddy Curry’s minutes went to David Lee… or if 20 of Crawford’s went to Mardy Collins.

I don’t have time to do the math right now, but it’s not a complicated calculation.

Seen in that light, it’s easy to imagine that IT will end up costing the Knicks 5-10 wins this year, just in his coaching.

Of course, that means a great coach probably couldn’t wring more than about 35 wins from this gang. I thought the talent level was a bit better, but Ben is right that PART of our problem is the decline, individually, of several players: notably Curry and Richardson. Also Balkman (maybe due to injury), and to a lesser extent, Lee & Robinson (declined in performance, but not dramatically).

But an intelligent coach would have noticed that Q is either not recovered from surgery, or just totally washed up, and wouldn’t be playing him 30+ minutes a game. That coach would notice that Curry is sub-mediocre, and would replace him with Lee & Randolph.

Berri’s point is that IT’s talent evaluation, like that of most GMs,is overly swayed by a love of scoring ability. If he appraised “talent” differently, he never would have considered Curry or Crawford a “top young talent,” or considered Marbury a star-level player.

Berri is an economist and the notion that players are paid for scoring, not for contributing to wins, is a regular theme in his work.

my biggest disappointment is that on the one night curry plays perhaps his most complete game as a knick he couldn’t sniff the ball in the 4th quarter. the guards didn’t appear to be looking for him, and isiah did nothing to free him with movement and/or screens. that was awful.

the non-call on bowen at the end was a good non-call. when robinson picked up duncan’s turnover, honestly, i was hoping he’d keep the ball.

finley’s game-clincher was a classic example of marbury floating defensively when he really had no business straying so far from his man. his recovery out to finley was not poor, but he shouldn’t have floated so far off in the first place. otherwise i thought he played a pretty good game.

Is eddie muffins pulling our legs or what….im confused now! he actually had a good game, he jumped for rebounds and even tried to block shots…against Timmie Duncan????? Is he showcasing himself as trade bait??
with that said…how does he NOT get the ball in the 4th quarter?
how come crawfish driving to the hole w 10 secs left and we are DOWN BY 3!!!…can somebody show IT a PLAYBOOK!!
good game though…see what happens tomorrow…

Man I hear you about Curry. It wasn’t the scoring, he actually moved his feet on D and grabbed a few boards in traffic. The absence of Z-bo obviously energized him, now the brilliant coach has to figure out a way for them to co-exist.

Yeah great game by Curry. No reservations there. Did a good job on Duncan. Very disappointing loss.

Re the points made above on the importance of coaching, I think its an interesting debate. Berri’s conclusion from his dissection of the data is that there are some coaches who do make a difference, Don Nelson, Jackson, Larry Brown, and a few others, but that the effect is generally quite small.

I agree with the point made by Caleb and others, that coaches hurt teams much more than they help them, especially with playing time decision. There is less room on the upside.

In Basketball on Paper doesn’t Oliver make the point that the offensive system players are in really doesn’t matter all that much? I seem to remember him arguing that Shaq has been a dominant player in every offensive scheme he has played in. Jordan was even more effective before the triangle offense arrived. I think that’s another reason why I generally am amenable to the argument that coaches don’t matter as much as we might think.

I found this loss comforting. The Knicks outplayed the defending champs. Curry actually out scored and out rebounded Duncan. The team Defense was good. The Knicks were almost perfect from the FT line. They out shot the Spurs by 7%. They fell down on the road by double digits and came back to make it a one possession game at the end.

And the best part was they lost, so there wasn’t any “significant improvement” for Isiah to feel good about. I mean if they had actually beaten the defending champs on their home court, Isiah’d probably get another 4 year extension on top of the one he already has…

That was a really entertaining game. It is a shame we lost but as a team we played great. Curry was a beast on both sides of the floor. His defense on Duncan was good and he was even doing a pretty good job slowing Parker on the pick and rolls.

So far in the four games Randolph has missed Curry has averaged 22 pts and 8.8 rebs while shooting 77.3% from the field with an 80% ts% and 2.8 turnovers.

Curry is a different player when Randolph is not there.

If we could just unload Randolph for a starter at SF we could be a okay team. Randolph for Nocioni or Odom sounds good to me.

“I believe that 85 percent of a coach’s impact, his job, is just putting the best players on the floor… it’s not rocket science out there.”

To say that the only significant way an NBA coach effects the outcome of a game is by putting the right players on the court vastly under estimates the job. I think that that is probably more true in baseball than it is in basketball, where a rotation is set and a line up is set and there is a “book” by which all managers manage so as not to be second guessed by the media. The NBA, I think, is (or at least could and should be) more of a coaches league.

Jordan would have won 6 rings even if Doug Collins hadn’t been replaced by Phil Jackson. The same may not be able to be said for Shaq and Kobe, as we’ve seen just how fragile an all-world NBA player’s ego can be. If Larry Brown was the coach of the 2000-2003 Lakers, they may not have won three titles.

At the same time, it is quite possible that the 2004 Pistons would not have won the title if Rick Carlisle (or anybody else for that matter) had been coaching them instead of Larry Brown.

Jeff Van Gundy may have only been mathematically responsible for five or six wins in 1999, but most of those were against the Heat, Hawks, and Pacers in the playoffs. He got two guards who didn’t know how to share the court to play flawlessly together. He got the impossibly soft Marcus Camby to become a shot blocking Dennis Rodman. He designed a defensive approach that interrupted the other team enough to keep games close enough to win at the end. He did more than simply put the right guys on the court and let ‘em play.

The same can be said for Pat Riley with the 2004 Knicks. That was an over achieving team that Riley instilled a superior defensive mentality in and they won because of it. As soon as Don Nelson took over the exact same group of players Riley had success with, we saw just how important his contribution was. I think an in depth comparison of the way Riley coached the 2005 Knicks and Nelson coached his half of the 2006 Knicks would show that both coaches did the exact same job of “playing the right players”. Still, the Riley Knicks were a much much better team than the Nelson Knicks, and returned to form when a Riley clone (JVG) took back the team (they still made it to the second round of the playoffs, losing competitively to the greatest team of all time).

Every team has a personality– it’s own culture. The perfect coach for that team can bring out the absolute best in it. It is more than just playing Ben Wallace 35 minutes a game and Antonio McDyess 20. There is a massive amount of ego control, of preparing, of dissecting video tape, of managing the media, of motivating players, of knowing when to act and when not to act.

Once a game begins, it is on the players to perform, and I believe coaches get too much credit for individual wins and losses in general. But they have a huge impact on how the team performs, and the wrong coach on the wrong team can be disastrous. Larry Brown would probably have the Portland Trailblazers with less wins than the Timberwolves right now. As it is, they obviously have a nice chemistry going on there with their young players.

If you don’t have Michael Jordan on your team, then good chemistry is the absolute most important thing for a successful basketball team to have and nobody effects the chemistry of a team more than the coach.

p.s.– Riley definitely should have played Rolando Blackman in the 2004 finals, especially while Starks was shooting 2-22 in game 7. That was a big mistake on his part, and it may have cost the city a championship. Putting the right guys on the court is a huge aspect of coaching. I just don’t think it is 85% of the success of a coach and his team.

Maybe it’s because it’s 3:20 in the morning here, but it’s friggin hilarious to me that you’ve pushed the good ol’ days of the 90’s up a decade. And not just once, but in two posts. After referencing ’99.
How did that happen??

“is that the same “impossibly soft” Marcus Camby who was the league defensive player of the year last season?”

Yes. He was a different player prior to April of 1999. He had never drawn a charge in his career. He was traded for Oakley and it appeared all we got back was a lighter, softer, weaker, less in shape, worse shooting, worse rebounding, more apathetic version of Charles Smith.

Then something clicked.

That is why Knick fans had a special attachment to Marcus when he was here. We watched him evolve before our eyes.

“I thought you wrote “Renaldo Balkman” and you were just making a joke.”

Seriously– where is Renaldo Balkman and why doesn’t he play anymore? (Maybe its a little known Knick policy that if your first name has the letters Rlando and your last name has the letters Blaman your basketball skills are not considered useful to the organization)…

“Yes. He was a different player prior to April of 1999. He had never drawn a charge in his career. He was traded for Oakley and it appeared all we got back was a lighter, softer, weaker, less in shape, worse shooting, worse rebounding, more apathetic version of Charles Smith.”

um, he blocked almost 4 shots a game his last year on Toronto (only his second year in the league), and was the number 2 pick overall. he was injury-prone then, and always has been, but the rest of that is a wild exaggeration.

Would you disagree that he was a soft player when he came to NY and not so soft when he left?

Maybe I don’t remember the first few months of the 1999 season (it was abbreviated) properly, but what I do remember is Camby being the antithesis of everything that was great about Oakley. No hustle; no willingness to take the charge; no pride in his game.

His injuries may have made him tentative early in his career, and thus ‘soft’ by NY standards, but when he developed a mental toughness, that was what made him the player he’s been. That mental toughness was instilled in him by NBA coaches that cared and knew what to do to help him achieve his potential (which was the original point of my Camby reference).

1. Trade Randolph for Kenyon Martin. Martin’s injury situation means that the Nuggets would probably like this deal. Maybe. They’d love a Camby-Randolph frontcourt. Martin if healthy would be a good complement to Curry (assuming Curry plays like last year in Randolph’s absence). And I’d rather have the frustration of an oft injured player far more than an oft ball-hog loser player. If Martin is injured then Lee plays. Win-win I reckon.

2. Curry for Dampier. Dampier is much worse than Curry but at least he defends and rebounds. Dallas can give more minutes to Diop when they want to go for more defense.

I don’t think either of these trades are terribly good, but the salaries match, and they recognise the terrible contracts of the current Knicks. I’d just rather a Curry-Martin or Dampier-Randolph frontcourt than the current misaligned pairing.

“Yes. He was a different player prior to April of 1999. He had never drawn a charge in his career. He was traded for Oakley and it appeared all we got back was a lighter, softer, weaker, less in shape, worse shooting, worse rebounding, more apathetic version of Charles Smith.”

um, he blocked almost 4 shots a game his last year on Toronto (only his second year in the league), and was the number 2 pick overall. he was injury-prone then, and always has been, but the rest of that is a wild exaggeration.

Camby was an awful rebounder his first two years, prior to coming to New York. Like Eddy Curry bad – just look at the per-40 numbers. Something “clicked” his first two seasons in New York (maybe the Ewing injury/playoffs/Van Gundy). It’s maybe one of the best improvements in that category by a center. I wrote about it nearly two years ago:

Mr. Kroger: two C’s, two D’s and an F. That’s a 1.2 grade average. Congratulations, Kroger. You’re at the top of the Delta pledge class. Mr. Dorfman? Zero point two… Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. Mr. Hoover, president of Delta house? One point six; four C’s and an F. A fine example you set! Daniel Simpson Day… HAS no grade point average. All courses incomplete. Mr. Blu – MR. BLUTARSKY… ZERO POINT ZERO.

I don’t think trading for Kenyon would be a good move for two reasons. 1. We have a really good two—David Lee. He’s your double/double guy. 2. Kenyon is great, but gets hurt too often. What we really need is a point guard,even a ham and egger. We also need a three that can shoot and rebound. I would be very happy trading Randolph, who has no concept of the team game at all for either position. If we could get a competent point guard and a talented three, we could bring in the others, i.e., Balkman, Q, Crawford as a second unit for energy. Curry would be OK at the 1 if his deficits were made up at the other positions. He is a strong interior offensive player who normally would command a double. Marbury would be OK at the 2, if someone could shoot. It seems that the team is never viewed as a whole, but rather as a bunch of parts. It’s OK to have flaws, if they were compensated.

Also at no time should Rose be in the game while Lee is on the court. I think Isiah is nervous because if Lee outplays Randolph and Curry too much more people will complain that he doesn’t start. Instead it is better to periodically bench him to make it look like he has some bad games.

Hey, if they didn’t have such a horrific first quarter, they actually could’ve been in this brick-fest. Zach really needs to be pulled aside: 7 shots made, 6 turnovers. He negates his own offense and is worse than Curry in that respect. He cannot be allowed to get isolation on his man anymore. Curry needs to be fed the ball. But his ego is so fragile, he disappears if he gets his shot blocked. I just don’t think he can bring it night after night. The guard play is awful. Again, noone with more than 3 assists. Nate’s the only one who could almost keep up with Brooks. We need a tough starting 2 guard so badly.
It is very possible that this team doesn’t win another game this year if the stars align.

“Am I alone in wanting to see a Nate, Jamal, Renaldo, Lee, Curry starting 5?”

I would put steph in this starting 5 instead of crawford. at least steph is consistent in what he gives you, he is much more aggrssive than crawford, and plays better D..while he is not “starbury” anymore, he can still ball..i think crawford is a off the bench guy and thats it, isiah plays him 30-40 mins a game hoping he gets hot, dont think thats a good strategy for your starting 2 guard..same with Q rich….